History Channel are re-airing “Bible Secrets Revealed” this Friday, April 18, 2014 at 8am. The series advised by and starring archeologist Robert Cargill also features Reza Aslan, Bart Ehrman, Elaine Pagels, Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Mark Goodacre, Chris Keith, James Tabor, Jennifer Wright-Knust, Peter Lanfer, Dale Martin, Jodi Magness, and me.
Here are the titles and times from the schedule:

I will be on the Alan Colmes Show on Friday, 17 April, 2014 at 7pm ET talking about my book The Myth of Persecution, the history of Christianity, and misunderstandings about persecution in the modern world. Myth of Persecution is now out in paperback and available for purchase on amazon, books-a-million, and Barnes and Noble.

A pastor died trying to charm a snake because it says so in the Bible. Professor Candida Moss look at other Biblical directives that could get you killed.

Pastor Jamie Coots, a snake-handling minister from Middlesboro, Kentucky and former star of the National Geographic reality show Snake Salvation, died after being bitten by a snake in church.Read more here.

Turns out that nun who gave birth to a child named after the Pope is in good company in the long history of virgin births. Professor Candida Moss on all the strange excuses given when there’s no father.

Last week a nun in Italy gave birth to a baby boy after being rushed to hospital with stomach pains. She named the boy Francesco, or Francis, and nuns at her convent are said to be “very surprised” by the news. No one more so than the woman herself who remarked—in what could be a direct quote from the hit Discovery Channel TV show—“I didn’t know I was pregnant.” Still, while few details are available, she presumably knows how she got that way.

Pope Francis continues to shake up the Vatican establishment. Today, speaking from his studio window to followers in St. Peter’s square, he announced 19 new cardinals from some surprising places, the AP reports.

Francis did not name any cardinals from the United States and chose instead to represent poorer nations. Sixteen of the Cardinals are younger than 80 and will likely be eligible to vote for the next pope. Among them are archbishops from the Ivory Coast, Brazil, Argentina, Nicaragua, Chile and Haiti.

Candida Moss, who’s a professor of theology at Notre Dame, says in the past, this group would have provoked “amazement and speculation.”

University of Notre Dame theologian Candida Moss specializes in Bible studies and early Christian history and is the author most recently of The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom. Before participating in a panel on why we need saints, she talked about her suspicions involving a conspiracy to oppress cold caffeine drinkers and what it’s like to read The Great Gatsby for the first time as an adult.